


Summer's never coming again

by Blanquette



Series: Wild Days [5]
Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Car Ride, Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Ocean, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 09:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12861417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blanquette/pseuds/Blanquette
Summary: Minhyuk takes Hyungwon on a car ride.





	Summer's never coming again

**Author's Note:**

> It started out because I wanted to give Hyungwon and Minhyuk's story in this series some sort of conclusion but this happened instead. I haven't written much lately because of reasons, so I really hope this holds up.

1.

Hyungwon has been sitting at the bus stop for too long a time. The long wooly coat he draped over himself before going out into the night does nothing anymore to protect him against the cold. He shivers, looking down at his shoes. They’re soaking up the melted snow covering the ground and he frowns, trying to move his numbing toes.  

Only few cars still pass him by, their tires drawing wet sounds from the ground, trailing red lights after themselves. Hyungwon stares at them instead of staring at the night sky overhead, the light of the moon and stars drowned out by the streetlamps. He shivers again, shoulders tense, hands shoved far into his pockets. He thinks of checking Minhyuk’s text again, maybe he was wrong about the time, but that would require getting his hands out and he doesn’t have gloves. So he just stays on the bench, face disappearing in a huge scarf, waiting.

It’s another ten minutes which feel like a hundred before the beat-up carcass of Minhyuk’s car finally stops in front of him, sending melted snow flying, Hyungwon lifting his legs too late to avoid getting them soaked. Minhyuk leans over the passenger’s seat, opens the door with a grin, gesturing at Hyungwon to get in. There’s no apologies for his tardiness and Hyungwon shrugs, getting off the frozen bench with difficulty, shuffling over to the car before letting himself fall into the seat, latching onto the heaters.

“Close the door, you’re letting out all the heat.”

He does, sparing a pointed look at Minhyuk, whose smile just widens.

“Thank you for coming with me.”

“I almost just died.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

Minhyuk waves him off, kicking the car into gear, and they’re driving into the night, leaving their own red-light trail in the melted snow. The car is old and noisy, and Minhyuk has to drive slow lest it sends them skidding across the snowy road. Hyungwon doesn’t care. He can finally feel his fingers again, and that’s all that matters.

“Why would you wanna go out at this time, though?”

“No reasons.”

“Okay.”

Minhyuk is quiet, uncharacteristically so, like he sometimes is when old shadows come creeping back. Hyungwon isn’t one to pry, so he just sticks his hands closer to the heating vents and looks at the city outside the window. There’s the river on one side, a black expanse of still water, drawing a sharp contrast against the lights of the tall buildings he can see on the other side. Minhyuk takes a bridge leading them over the water, and for a while there Hyungwon feels like they’re the only two people left alive in the city, running away from phantom lights and empty streets.   

Hyungwon doesn’t ask where they’re going. He figures it’s not that important. Minhyuk takes him places and he just follows, because Minhyuk always needs company and Hyungwon is quiet and just there, always there, never complaining. There’s a duffle bag on the backseat of the car and he figures the painter must have found yet another place he wants to drown in colors. So Hyungwon doesn’t ask where they’re going, even when Minhyuk’s dingy car takes them away from the city onto the highway, and he should probably worry because Minhyuk isn’t the best driver, and it’s really dark, and it’s started to snow again. But he can’t find it in himself to care. Wherever Minhyuk goes, he goes.

 

2.

“I thought you wanted to go paint somewhere.”

Minhyuk smile is bright, even in the dark of night, and he looks years younger, in his oversized coat, beanie, and the scarf he wound three times around his neck while getting out of the car.

“Nah, I just wanted to get out for a bit.”

He took them to the sea, wordlessly and in the dead of night, and Hyungwon doesn’t mind that he followed without asking. Here the stars are brighter, the moon bigger, everything more stark and contrasted. He can barely make out the sea lapping up against the sand. It hasn’t snowed here yet, and the air is sharp, almost hurting his lungs when he breathes in.

He watches as Minhyuk hurdle over the talus where they parked the car to go run towards the sea, and he feels warmth in his chest when he should be freezing. His eyes won’t leave Minhyuk as he suddenly stops to stand still, having reached the edge of the water. Hyungwon is suddenly so very awake, and he stands there, watching, until Minhyuk turns around and gestures at him to come down.

Before doing so, Hyungwon opens the duffle bag still resting on the backseat, finds inside snacks and a fluffy blanket he takes with him as he follows in Minhyuk’s steps. He drapes it over both their shoulders when he reaches him, and they stand there side by side, quiet for a while, staring at the water that laps gently a few feet away from them.

“It’s great, isn’t it? The sea at night.”

Hyungwon can just nod. Starlight is reflecting on the edges of tiny waves and the dark mass of the water is glittering, like a twisted, moving mirror of the sky above them; there are no sounds except for the wind and the gentle backwash of the waves. It is great, the sea at night. So Hyungwon can just nods, and huddle closer to Minhyuk, because as great as it is, there is still a piercing wind chilling him to the bones. But it’s fine, really, he doesn’t mind.

Minhyuk shakes himself and leads them away from the water, where the sand is dry and sneaks into their shoes, and they sit down, in each other’s space, tangled in the blanket in an effort to keep the warmth. It doesn’t really work. They don’t really mind.

“Doesn’t it feel like we’re the only ones left alive?”

Hyungwon smiles as Minhyuk voices his own observations from earlier, nodding against him. Minhyuk is leaning against Hyungwon’s chest, their legs tangled together, and it’s almost comfortable. But Minhyuk can’t see him smile, so Hyungwon tries to make his numb jaw work. His voice comes out scratchy. He coughs.

“Yeah, it does.”

“I wouldn’t mind, if it was with you.”

“Did something happen?”

“Don’t you think the sea looks like a painting?”

“I do. Minhyuk, did something happen?”

“I wish I could paint something like this one day. I had a call this afternoon. My dad died in an accident.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

Hyungwon closes his arms around Minhyuk, brings him closer to his chest. Minhyuk burrows, lets out a sigh. He feels fragile under Hyungwon’s touch, like a bird with hollowed bones, and Hyungwon feels a wave of affection crash over him, arising from deep within himself.

“I didn’t cry. I didn’t really feel anything. I just acknowledged it as a new fact. Does it make me a bad person? Aren’t children supposed to love their parents? I just feel empty.”

“You don’t have to love them if they did nothing to deserve it.”

Minhyuk never talks about his family. Hyungwon never asks. But he’s not an idiot. There was something, in Kihyun aggressive protectiveness over him, in Minhyuk’s almost desperate love for their little circle, in his sudden quiet spells and hovering shadows. There was something that spelt a hard story Hyungwon wasn’t quite sure he would bear to hear.   

“I wanted to see the ocean. Thank you for coming.”

Hyungwon hums, the vibration in his chest seeping into Minhyuk’s body.

“I think I already grieved for my dad, long ago. Maybe that’s it.”

There’s a crisp in the air, and soon it starts snowing, white spots dotting the scenery and melting in Minhyuk’s hair, against his skin. He shivers, and Hyungwon shivers with him from under the blanket that isn’t doing much anymore to protect them. They watch in silence as snow slowly covers the ground, drawing an even sharper contrast against the dark mass of the water. Minhyuk is the first to break the silence, shifting against Hyungwon is search of more warmth. They can barely feel their limbs anymore.

“Do you think it’s weird? That there’s something wrong with me?”

“I think it’s okay to never forgive people who hurt you. I think it’s okay to choose a family of your own. I think it’s okay to go see the ocean instead of crying over people who don’t deserve your tears, and I think we’re going to freeze to death if we stay here any longer.”

Minhyuk has a laugh, warm and genuine, and tension seeps out of him, melting with the snow on his skin. The shadows are painted white, too, and soon he gets up, tugging on Hyungwon’s arms who wrestles with his too-long limbs for a bit before getting up. They are too numb to run, and it is a waddling walk back to the car, Minhyuk folded against Hyungwon’s side.

 

3.

“Will we ever be warm? I don’t even remember how it feels. It’s like summer’s never coming again.”

Minhyuk laughs, elbowing Hyungwon who’s hogging the car’s heaters, wrestling him for more blanket. He wouldn’t mind, though, Hyungwon thinks, if summer were to never come again. Because Minhyuk is warm, because there’s the sun in his laugh, because he will paint summer on crumbling walls and tall pillars reflected in water. Surely, it would be enough.

The snow is still falling, sharply visible in the cones of the car’s headlight, and it’s so dark around them they could as well be submerged in water, swallowed by the ocean, never to be seen again. Snow dims everything, from lights to sounds to emotions, and if there’s goosebumps on Hyungwon’s skin, if his fingers are numb and the tip of his ears red and burning, there’s a space next to his heart spreading warmth to his entire being.

Minhyuk settled back in the driver seat, having successfully wrestled the entire blanket from Hyungwon, his hands resting limply on the wheel. He doesn’t want to go home yet, even though it is already more morning than it is night. It feels like a moment suspended in time, just him and Hyungwon and the snow and the ocean, and he wants to prolong it as long as he can. But he’s tired, too, and all good things must end.

“I don’t want to go home.”

“Then don’t.”

“We can’t stay here.”

“I want to sleep.”

“We can’t sleep here.”

“Let’s go home. Mine.”

“Okay.”

 

4.

The sun follows them into the city. It shines off of the river water and the buildings. Streetlights are shutting off and early risers take possession of streets that seemed so empty before. They’re both silent as life stirs around them, mourning a broken spell.

They tiptoe into Hyungwon’s apartment, find his mom asleep in front of the television that is spilling a cold, ugly light into the small living room. Hyungwon turns it off, drops a blanket over the small frame of his mother, overworked and overwhelmed. He watches her for a few minutes, making sure she’s comfortable enough. Minhyuk has already disappeared into his room and when he joins him, his clothes are pooled at the foot of the bed where he lies, in a ratty tee shirt and underwear.

Hyungwon looks at him too, for a bit. He’s too thin, his eyes are too bright, always too bright as he’s teetering on the edge of something Hyungwon isn’t quite sure he understands. He’s not quite sure he could follow if Minhyuk were to fall, either. So he holds onto him like a drowning man to a lifeline, because Minhyuk has come to mean so much, he realizes, over the time they spent crawling through the city, climbing cold scaffoldings, descending towards dark waters, Minhyuk spraying screaming colors over dull greys and empty spaces. 

“Do you feel better?”

They’re squished together in Hyungwon’s tiny bed, the same he had since middle school. They don’t mind, burying freezing fingers and icy feet in each other’s limbs.

“I felt worse about my lack of feelings towards it than about my dad actually dying.”

Hyungwon can barely make out Minhyuk’s face in the dark, so he raises a hand, slowly tracing his features with a light finger, replacing sight with touch. Minhyuk closes his eyes.

“But, yeah, I think it’s okay to never forgive him. I think it’s okay to choose a family of my own. I think it’s okay to see the ocean with you instead of crying over him.”

Minhyuk shifts under Hyungwon’s touch, burying his face against his chest, and Hyungwon’s arms close over him once more, his hand stroking his hair soothingly.

“You’re warm.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s nice.”

“You’re nice.”

Minhyuk chuckles and Hyungwon feels it in his chest, and it fills the empty space next to his heart that is always starved for warmth, for love, for bright colors and sunny smiles. His hug tightens around Minhyuk who sighs, molding himself into Hyungwon’s body as if the latter could swallow him, hold him secure within himself.

Instead Hyungwon fits the covers more snuggly around them, leaving only their heads sticking out, following the childish belief that they’re now protected from monsters. Because they do exist, Hyungwon knows, monstrous men with too much hate and too much anger within themselves, men that destroy instead of nurturing, men that leave ever-lasting scars on the mind of their preys, on their bodies.

“Minhyuk?”

“Hm?”

“You’re all right now.”

“I know.”

Hyungwon waits for Minhyuk to fall asleep first, just to make sure. He waits for his breath to even out, for his body to go limp. Waits until he’s sure it’s a peaceful sleep, until he’s sure nothing will pull him down, to the abyss that sometimes make him jolt up in a cold sweat. When he’s sure, he closes his eyes, soaking up Minhyuk’s warmth, listening to his breathing until he falls too, in a peaceful sleep full of snow and waveless waters.

 

5.

Minhyuk is all right. Minhyuk with bright eyes and sunny smiles, who’s walking on the edge of buildings and darker abysses still. Minhyuk with too much intensity, spilling colors everywhere. Burning fuel to go faster, as he doesn’t know when the car will break down. He’s all right.

There’s Hyungwon following in his footsteps, lost and a little in love, making sure he always comes back, making sure he never falls. There’s Kihyun, too, with a will to bend iron, that will pull him back if he ever does. Kihyun who plucked him out, settled him into a better life. One where he can drive to the sea to exorcise demons in the middle of the night. One where he can fall asleep under a blanket, pressed against a warm body, in a home where nothing is out to get him. He’s all right. He’s safe. He's loved.   

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title is actually from a song by The Black Skirts called Tangled.


End file.
